YANA AND THE SMALL PROBLEM Once upon a time, in the days of the now-dissolved Evil Empire, there lived in Moscow a very lovely and intelligent blonde girl named Yana. When she graduated at the top of her high school class the government told her that she wanted to work in the nuclear industry. She wisely chose studying for seven years to become a nuclear scientist at the Josef Stalin Institute for Blowing Things Up in Tblisi, Georgia, over becoming a pick-and-shovel miner for uranium ore in the Novosibirskiye Islands north of the Arctic Circle where there is no uranium. Despite an unfortunate setback while she was working on her neutron bomb graduation project for the government, which was the true name of all institutions within the Soviet Union, Yana graduated at the top of her class. "Congratulations, Comrade Yana," said Comrade Marshal Artz, the Commandant of the Josef Stalin Institute for Blowing Things Up in Tblisi, Georgia. "Is great news for you. Am pleased to announce you and you boyfriend, Comrade Batschka, have volunteered for transfer to Minsk and to most glorious secret research facility in all of Soviet Union. Facility is code-named Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity (DDARPA) to fool Amerikanski CIA. Science Officer is Comrade Director Makoyev. Is good man, from here in Georgia. Transfer will be approved when you have paid standard fee." Yana knew she would have to pay the standard fee for something because the Comrade Marshall had locked the door after escorting her into his office. She lifted her skirt and pulled aside her industrial cotton panties, giving the short, fat, balding man with the misshapen nose a good look at her shaved babushka. "Is to be quickie, Comrade Marshall, or are we make time for couch today?" Two hours later, as she arose from the couch and began dressing, the Comrade Marshall handed her a few neatly wrapped packages. "For going away presents," he explained. "Is going to be lonesome here without my best student ever. I give you small somethings to remember me by." Yana had already had a "small" something to remember, though she'd be happy to forget the semi-soft little pink pistol that he believed was a powerful Kalashnikov of love. She opened the packages and thanked him for the crotchless rayon panties in faded primary colors, each embroidered with the name of a different month, the vibrating dildo with cables to be attached to a car battery, the picture of the Comrade General himself wearing only polished marching boots and her panties on his head and autographed with the words, "Please to be returning any time you wish," and the liter of Old Trotsky. She could use the vodka to remove his taste from her mouth and to help forget the Comrade Marshall. *** Because of their researcher status at the Activity, Yana and her beloved Batschka did not have to apply to a waiting list for an apartment. They were immediately assigned to a dreary, unpainted, concrete-walled, two-room apartment with a bathroom down the hall. The building sat on Gloomye Prospekt only a half-kilometer from their Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity workplace on the southern outskirts of Minsk. The sixth floor walk-up apartment had an excellent view of the picturesque Svisloch River winding between broad banks bedecked with thick green grass and majestic leafy trees and of the spectacular fiery red sunsets beyond the odious columns of yellow-green steam rising from the hog fat rendering plant located next door. The DDARPA Science Officer, Comrade Director Makoyev, told Yana she was to build neutron bombs while Batschka, her beloved boyfriend, worked on a process to shrink them for concealment in small devices such as portable radios, the fender wells of Yugos, and very large, hollowed-out potatoes. "Yugos?" Batschka had asked with a frown. "Why not Trabants or Ladas?" Comrade Director Makoyev threw up his arms in a temperamental display of curmudgeonly intolerance with questions to which he did not know the answers. "Damn it, Comrade, am being Science Director, not doctor of psychology! All I am knowing is Amerikanskis are dumb enough to be purchasing Yugos, but they are not being completely stupid." The weapon shrinkage chamber had been designed by a committee of Argentinian, Yemeni, and Haitian physicists and built by itinerant Romanian sewage plant workers in northern Bulgaria of steel recycled from substandard North Korean frog-clickers. The specifications and quality were precisely as one would expect in the Soviet Union, but fortunately the chamber did not explode when it was activated. One day Yana walked past the faulty door seal of the shrinkage chamber at the precise moment that Batschka hit the activation switch. At first nobody noticed anything amiss. Two months later, on a night when Batschka's rampant pink tractor was plowing her shaved babushka with great fervor and much delight for the both of them, she realized she was staring at the end of his nose. His eyes had once been even with hers when they did the horizontal Bolshoi. "Batschi?" she said with a curious frown as she stilled the rocking of her shapely hips on their lumpy mattress stuffed with the finest imported Outer Mongolian straw. "Am noticing your eyes being no longer even with mine." "Am egregiously sorry, my little turnip," said Batschka with a loving smile as he looked down at her pretty face. His head dipped to kiss the pert pink points of her perky round bubulas before he continued. "Is because your shaved babushka is becoming much tighter these days. Is difficult to achieve full penetration." He shifted his weight and thrust forcefully. She gasped in surprise and more than a little discomfort. It felt as if an entire SCUD missile including the warhead had been slammed into her shaved babushka. "There," he announced with a groan of delighted agony as her hot, wet, shaved babushka pinched his manly organ like a crankshaft in a welder's vise. "Sexual submarine is at maximum depth in lagoon of love." Now she was staring at his mouth. "Batschi!" she cried in anguish. "We are having serious problem here!" "One moment my little borscht beet," gasped Batschka. His eyes unfocused and his hips increased to flank speed as his sexual submarine prepared to launch a seminal torpedo. "Am cumming now like mighty Soviet Army rushing in to liberate Czechoslovakia. Oh, LENIN!!!" *** Yana measured the pencil mark on the door frame again. It was true. She was only 162 centimeters tall! She had lost six centimeters. No wonder her clothes were loose. She had thought that she had lost weight because of the Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity's Dzhennikraigskye diet plan, which required one day's food ration per week to be surrendered to the administrators of DDARPA. The Josef Stalin Institute for Blowing Things Up in Tblisi, Georgia, had the similar Prityekan Diet Plan, but the Comrade General had been willing to eat shaved babushka instead of salt pork, turnip greens, and beets. So far the people at the Activity had, unfortunately, preferred the more substantial comestibles. A month later she verified that she was losing height at the rate of one millimeter per day. That was three centimeters per month! "Oh, Batschi!" she cried, showing him the two dated marks spaced three centimeters apart on the door frame in their apartment. "Is being monumental disaster! Am certain to be volunteered for transfer from Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity researcher to pick-and-shovel miner for uranium ore in Novosibirskiye Islands north of Arctic Circle where there is no uranium! What is possible for me to do?" Batschka wrapped her in his loving arms, kissed the top of her head, and said in a soothing voice, "Relax, my little skunk cabbage. We are being very lucky that most famous and knowledgeable physician in all of Soviet Union, winner of two Nobel Prizes and three-time Vivisectionist of Year, Comrade Doctor Spockanov, is right here in Minsk! Surely Comrade Director Makoyev will certify to Comrade Bureaucrat Smegma's Medical Treatment Necessity Verification Committee your case is genuine emergency. After all, you are being his favorite researcher after only short time here." "Assisted" by the Comrade Director's intervention, Comrade Bureaucrat Smegma's Emergency Medical Treatment Necessity Verification Committee needed only one month to certify Yana's case as a genuine emergency. Comrade Smegma himself personally scheduled her appointment with Comrade Doctor Spockanov at nine fifteen in the morning exactly eleven months later. Eleven months! She would be only 123 centimeters tall by then! She hadn't been 123 centimeters since she was eight years old! She had to do something, and quickly. But what? While she was waiting in line to buy a loaf of bread at the Red October Bakery on Pispur Prospekt, she realized what she must do. *** Yana waited outside the Heroes' Medical Office Building adjacent to the most glorious Botanical Gardens in all the Soviet Union until the Comrade Doctor emerged. She approached him at the door. Crying tears as huge as Antonov transports she poured her story out to him. "Now, now, Comrade Yana," Doctor Spockanov said in an emotionless voice. He patted her shoulder with joined fingers twisted by arthritis until they spread in a "V"-shape. "Is fascinating story, but please to be controlling your emotions." "But Comrade Doctor...!" "Comrade Yana! Please. You must learn to be a little patient." +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+